


Life

by glacis



Category: Highlander: The Series, Queen of Swords
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-31
Updated: 2010-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-06 21:12:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glacis/pseuds/glacis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doctor Helm makes a housecall and gets close to a Seer. Death chooses life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life

_Early California, a time and place of upheaval and injustice_

_Where death was only a breath away_

_And life was too precious to waste_

The first time he'd seen Tessa Alvarado she'd looked like a baby who'd just had her sweet snatched away from her. The first time he'd seen Luis Montoya he'd nearly had heart failure until he registered the lack of a buzz and the unscarred eye. The first time he'd seen the Queen of Swords she'd been making a monkey out of Montoya.

The first time he'd seen Marta he'd known she was trouble.

It wasn't the first time Methos had met a seer. They'd been relatively common in Mesopotamia, and both Greece and Egypt had had their fair share. He'd even lived with the Romany, more than once over the centuries, so he recognized the light in her eyes, and the way it diffused when the visions came. He'd snatched his hand away from her grip as quickly as he could without further damaging her own sliced palm.

He'd had a feeling then that it was far from over.

With concerted effort, and the fortuitous intervention of such life events as a raging epidemic of fever, a saboteur destroying his lab, and an assassin appearing from his recent past and wreaking havoc on the innocent (yet again), he managed to avoid the Rom seer. He had enough on his plate trying to create a new life without a keen-eyed Gypsy mucking it up again.

California had seemed like a good place to hide. Unlike the Old World, there were few immortals here to find and challenge him. Immortals tended to like their comfort, most of them, and the ones that didn't were usually the younger ones. He could feel them coming and avoid or kill them easily. And it was so very different from New Orleans. Dry desert and few people, unlike the cramped, steamy, sensual world he'd left behind, a woman's blood on his hands and a murderous immortal crying vengeance on his trail.

Now, he wasn't so certain.

His recent past as Robert Helm had been much on his mind lately. Memories of war and death, his role as a spy, once again being anyone he needed to be to do the job he wanted to do, killing anyone who got in his way : he shoved them down deeply with the old memories of Death, in a crowded dark box that just kept getting more and more full. One day it would burst. When that happened, he'd find a way to take his own head. He wasn't going back to that life.

He'd had more than enough of death.

A footstep in the doorway startled him, and he swung about to find himself face to face with the woman he'd been trying to avoid. He couldn't look away. Her normally warm brown skin was pale, and her dark eyes were wide with worry.

"What's wrong?" He almost got the entire question out before she darted forward, pulling on his arm, sweeping him past his bag and urging him on. He grabbed for the handles on his doctor's kit as she pulled him out the door.

"Hurry, there's no time to waste."

He allowed himself to be chivvied into the Alvarado trap, watching her competent hands on the reins, thankful she'd let go of him. Her touch made him shiver. He didn't need the complication.

"Tell me what's wrong," he half-bellowed over the thunder of the horses' hooves.

"My mistress ..." She swallowed, and his eyes followed the movement of her throat. "There's been an accident."

"What kind of accident?"

She whipped the horses into a near-frenzy, and he clutched the side of the carriage. Beneath the noise of the road, he thought he heard her say 'bullet.' He stared thoughtfully at the horse's ears in front of him. An interesting sort of accident. A flash of brown eyes behind a black lace mask, long black hair whipping in the wind, a patrician face outlined against the sky ... he had a very good idea what sort of accident it had been. Not that he'd say anything.

He owed the Queen of Swords his life. Or this one, at any rate. Besides, steel cross-bow bolts hurt like the very devil. She'd spared him that.

He would spare her this, if he could.

The trap had barely stopped before he jumped down. A peasant ran out to the horses' heads, and Marta flew down beside him, then past him, leading the way into the hacienda. What he found in the master bedroom was precisely what he'd expected to find.

Too much blood. A terribly pale young woman, eyes barely registering his presence. Three bullets, lodged in her chest and side, barely missing her rib cage, barely missing her heart.

The colonel's soldiers were terrible shots. It was a very good thing.

Rapping out orders for clean bandages and hot water, he had servants scurrying. Marta didn't leave the bedside, her hand firmly clasping Tessa's. Her other hand was busy, brushing heavy hair back from a sweating forehead, dabbing at the feverish skin with a towel. She murmured reassurances constantly in a mixture of Spanish and Romany, endearments falling like rain on the desert. She loved this girl like a daughter, and she was no doubt feeling Tessa's pain.

His hands were busy, holding her still, probing for pieces of metal, thanking a god he hadn't believed in for millennia when he discovered the bullets hadn't fragmented. Moving carefully yet so swiftly that at times his hands were a blur, he traced the path of the bullets and removed them, one at a time, bathing the wounds with antiseptic, packing them with gauze and binding them as quickly as he could. She'd already lost too much blood. If she lost any more, they would lose her.

In surprisingly little time, and still much longer than he would have preferred, Tessa was free of the poisoning lead, cleaned as best she could be around the sluggishly-bleeding wounds, and bandaged tightly to stop any further damage and blood loss. He stared down at her torso, white bandages over creamy tan skin, and found his eyes fixing on a single freckle by her hip bone. She was too young for this. They all were.

He felt immeasurably old.

Slender brown fingers touched his knuckles, making the red washed skin on the back of his hand appear obscene in contrast. He jolted, and looked up to find Marta staring at him with concern.

"Will she be all right, doctor?"

Why did people always ask him that? He was a doctor, not God. He didn't know what was going to happen. "I don't know," he answered honestly, flinching slightly as he always did at the instant of betrayal that flashed through her eyes when he wouldn't lie and say it would be fine. Then her eyes, improbably, warmed.

"Thank you," she said quietly. He looked askance at her. "You did all you could."

"I don't know whether it will be enough."

"She is strong."

"Yes," he agreed, reluctantly. "And young, and in excellent health. The bullets missed the major organs, but there was damage to the muscle and surrounding flesh, and she lost a great deal of blood."

"What can we do?" she asked quietly. He found himself smiling at her. Tessa wasn't the only very strong woman in the Alvarado household. She'd no doubt learned it from this one.

"We wait. Watch. And pray, if you believe it will do any good."

So they did. Well, she prayed. He watched. They both waited. Too many instances of being worshipped himself had led him to an uneasy agnosticism. He'd seen strange things. He was a rather strange thing himself. But he knew too much of pain, death and hopelessness to put too strong a faith in miracles.

Marta was extremely efficient. At his suggestion, a message was sent via one of the peones that lied convincingly that the Alvarado hacienda was hosting a small relapse of the fever from earlier in the summer. Being terrified of the illness that had nearly killed him, there was no chance whatsoever of a surprise visit from El Colonel. After having spent several hundred years outsmarting Kronos, before running away in the end, his doppelganger was no challenge whatsoever.

Early in the morning of the second night's watch, he looked up from his book to catch her watching him. It wasn't the first time she'd done it. It was the first time she didn't look away. He didn't say anything, just stared calmly back into her eyes. It was an extremely difficult thing to do. They made him feel naked.

He had too much to hide to ever feel comfortable naked.

A small sound from the bed broke their staring contest before he could lose, and he snapped into the healer role instantly. Marta leaned forward from where she was sitting on the side of the bed, a cool wet cloth in her hand, and their heads nearly met over Tessa. He pulled back.

She didn't.

Concentrating on his patient, he determined that the fever had broken, and she was sleeping normally, if deeply. He conveyed the good news to Marta in a hushed voice, not wishing to disturb Tessa's slumber. Those long strong fingers closed around his hand again, chilled from the cooling cloth, warm beneath the chill. He stared at her hand holding his.

It brought back memories he'd just as soon forget.

Wife number thirty, or was it thirty one? Didn't really matter. Numbers never did. Names mattered.

Hers had been Josefina. Her hair had been a wild tangle of honey brown, curls blowing around wide sherry eyes and a peekaboo dimple in her right cheek. She'd smiled often, and he'd loved the white flash of her teeth in her dark brown face. She'd been so alive. She'd known what he was, and given up the chance at a normal life, children, strong sons and beautiful daughters, because she'd thought him worthy of her love.

She'd read the cards. She'd known before he did.

His past had caught up with him, as it often did a thousand years ago, and it had struck at his most vulnerable point. The camp had been decimated by the hired thugs the Viking had sent, while he was occupied killing that same Viking in a clearing far from the wagons. When he'd returned he'd found nothing but death. She had been dragged to a nearby copse. He'd seen the blood on what was left of her dress, at her mouth and her hands and between her thighs, dripping into her hair from the seepage coming from her ear. He'd known she was dead.

He'd been wrong. She lived still. Long enough for him to gather her in his arms. Long enough to apologize, to cry into the blood and crushed bone at her temple, long enough to straighten her skirt over her legs and cradle her to him as she clutched at his shirt front. Long enough to wear her blood on his skin.

Marta's hand left his skin as if she'd felt fire, and the memory ended with the removal of her touch. He took a deep, shuddering breath, and found himself staring at a patch of blood on the back of his knuckle. He must have missed it when he'd washed.

"She's sleeping," he repeated blankly, not looking at Marta, feeling her eyes boring holes through him. "She's going to be all right." He stood stiffly, not noticing his book drop to the floor, then walked jerkily into the side room to plunge his hands in the icy water Marta had drawn earlier in the day. He didn't feel the cold.

He seldom did.

Consciously erasing the past from his mind, he stood at the small side window and stared up at the dark morning sky. The stars were out in full force. They were beautiful, so far out into the desert, without the ambient city glow from close set, tall buildings to block out their light. They reminded him of home. Before Death. As far back as he could remember.

Although no matter how far back he tried to go, Death was waiting for him.

Marta was watching again as he returned to the bedroom and took up his place at his patient's side. He picked up his book, stared blindly at the words that made no sense, and ignored her completely.

By the next afternoon, Tessa had woken, and while weak, she was coherent and aware. He pronounced her on the road to recovery and made use of a guest bedroom to sleep the clock around, with explicit instructions to awaken him if there were any indications of relapse into fever or if she reopened any wounds. No one interrupted his rest. He awoke late the fourth day to the smell of strong coffee, a fresh orange and sweet bread. Once refreshed, he returned to the sick room. Tessa was looking almost as good as new, if still very pale.

"Thank you, Doctor," she said, her voice sincere but her eyes watchful.

"Any time, Senorita Alvarado," he returned with as much gallantry as if he hadn't been digging pieces of metal out of her body four days earlier. "I live to serve. You may wish to take greater care with your guns, however. Accidents such as this can be fatal if they occur too often."

Her eyes narrowed at him. "Maldito," she muttered. He grinned at her briefly.

"You don't really think that tiny scrap of lace can obscure your identity, do you?" he asked very quietly. She glared at him.

"I don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about."

Her chin was so high in the air it was a wonder she could swallow, and it was vaguely adorable to see her attempt to look down her pug nose at him. He showed her how an expert, with the proper equipment, could truly look down his nose, and she actually, literally growled at him. It was delightful. He couldn't remember ever being that young.

"Marta will return you to your quarters, that is, if you are finished with me?"

Under the bravado was a trace of true fear. She did trust him, that much was obvious, or he wouldn't have left the hacienda alive, which would have meant starting over somewhere else. Again. And he wasn't quite ready for that yet. But she'd also been through hell with her wounds, and she didn't like feeling weak or helpless. Being at the mercy of another was not a situation that sat well with Tessa Alvarado.

"Yes, senorita," he assured her gently. "You are healing well. There is nothing more I can do for you."

He waited until Marta had entered the room before he gave her a detailed list of activities she could, and could not, indulge in, as well as a time frame for her recovery and a recommended diet. He could see Marta taking it all in, as easily as he could see the mutinous thrust of Tessa's lower lip, and had no doubt whatsoever of who would win the battle of wills that was sure to follow. Marta handed Tessa a glass of barley water and stared at Tessa until she drank it. He smiled and turned to go.

As he left her mulling over her prescribed week's bed rest and soft diet, he could feel Marta following closely behind him. She made him nervous.

"I know you'd like to keep an eye on your charge, so if I could simply borrow a mount, I'll make sure it's returned to -- "

"I will drive you," she told him bluntly. He glanced over at her. She was nearly as tall as he was. Her jaw was set in an expression he'd come to know well over the last few days. The woman defined determination. He sighed.

"And Tessa?" His tone implied that the girl would be up and fencing and leaping about on horses as soon as their backs were turned.

"Is asleep," she replied with finality.

He cocked a brow at her. "Laudanum?" He couldn't put as much disapproval in his voice as he probably should. It was, after all, exactly what he would have done.

"Enough to ensure that she rests, not enough to hurt her." Never, she didn't need to add. He heard it anyway.

"Very well then," he said briskly, hoping to put her off any friendly attempts at conversation or, god forbid, having her touch him again. "Let's go."

She made a funny little humming noise in her throat, and when he looked over his shoulder at her, he saw that she was looking at his arse. He blushed, nearly tripped, and cleared his throat loudly, reaching for his bag and stomping out the door. One would think that he was a mere stripling, not an immortal with 4800 years of experience under his belt.

The ride back to the town was as noisy as the ride out had been, if not nearly as urgent and bumpy. She pulled the horses to a precise stop in front of his living quarters, and he swung down with as much alacrity as he could without pulling a muscle or falling on his face.

"Call for me if you need me," he tossed over his shoulder. He opened the door, walked through it, and nearly caught her in the face with it as he tried to close it. She stepped around the edge and finished his movement, leaning against the door after it closed. He glared at her. "I'm a very busy man, and I've just spent several days with a single patient, leaving my practice unattended to do so --"

Her hands were cupping his face, and she was close, too close, the warmth of her melting away walls of ice he had worked decades to build. His vision swam, and all he saw were her deep brown eyes staring up at him. Into him.

So like Khentkawes. He'd been young, perhaps five hundred, and still believed in ephemera like love. She'd been a queen, dark eyes as glowing as those that held him prisoner now. She'd suffered through marriages as decreed by her status, but he'd stayed with her for thirty years. Trusted advisor, lover's heart; in life he had watched her grow old and die, and in death he had built a pyramid for her in Abu Sir and filled it with a lifetime's worth of gold and jewels.

She'd had the Sight, as well, and had known what he was the first time she'd seen him. Unlike others who had used him for their own means, set him up as a god or kept him as a slave, she'd given him her heart, and allowed him to be, for one too-brief lifetime, simply a man. When he had seen her body off to its eternal rest, posing as her son, he'd stared into an abyss. She would find peace eternal in the afterlife.

He would have neither. Ever.

Within a year, grave robbers had destroyed the fine home he'd built for her corpse. Desecrated and robbed the place of peace and beauty he'd created for her, then ambushed him in the back streets of the city, holding him down, raping then beating him to death. When he'd revived, they were nowhere to be found, and he hadn't seen their faces. He couldn't hunt them down. Couldn't remain where he'd been. Couldn't regain what he'd lost. It was the first of a string of loves violently wrenched from him.

Not long after that, Death had been born.

For the first time, he'd had power. The power of life and death, and he always chose the latter. Every innocent to die had been, at first, payment for the guilty, then pleasure for the sport of it. The centuries that followed were a blur. All he remembered was the pain, and the taste of blood, and the death.

There was a different taste on his tongue now. Lemon, and mint, and cinnamon, and woman. The hands that had been cupping his cheeks were now lacing through his hair, drawing his head down, angling his jaw for better access. His lips softened from the near-rictus snarl they'd drawn into at his memories, as she tasted him, as he tasted her. Blood and smoke and death faded in the face of her warmth.

His arms reached out of their own accord and wrapped around her waist, drawing her against him. The weight of her breasts against his chest, the softness of her thighs over his, the strength of her arms holding him close to her were the panacea for the ills of his memory. His hands roamed down her sides, his fingers reaching for her laces, as her hands went to the fastenings of his clothing.

They made it through the outer room, past the curtain that separated his bedroom from his office and laboratory, without letting go of one another or interrupting their busy hands. By the time they reached his bed, she was down to her shift, he to his shirt, his pants tangled around his boots. She slid from his grip and down his body, and he watched her, fascinated, as she tugged his boots and pants efficiently off and tossed them aside. The muscles moving under her skin, the curls falling down the neckline of her shift to caress the cleft between her breasts, the half-smile that told him she knew exactly what she was doing to him ... he hadn't been this enthralled in years.

She crawled back up his body, and his hands captured her shoulders, pulling her into a deep kiss. When they broke apart, she ran her palms under his shirt and lifted it over his head. She had to prompt him to let go of her so she could finish removing it, and he laughed a little at that, and so did she. When his own hands began a mirror journey under her shift, the laughter died and hunger grew in its place. He drew the sturdy linen up and over her head, gently untangling curls before they could pull, eyes darkening at the beauty he revealed.

His expression was mirrored in hers. Where the sun hadn't reached his body, he was the color of heavy cream, dark hair and rose nipples, his erection a heavier shade of rose, and her hands moved over all of him. He enjoyed the contrast between them, the cafe' au lait of her skin against the lightness of his own, her lean strength well matched with his. Her nipples were the color of caramel, and as delicious in his mouth. She moaned as he licked and sucked at her flesh, and he was lost in the sounds.

A lifetime filled with many lifetimes crashed through him as he lay with her, her hands on his skin triggering memories good and bad, the sweetness of her breath on his face and her thighs beneath his own drowning out the bad with the good. Faces spilled through his mind, brunette, blonde, red headed and sable, eyes of green and blue and black and sherry brown laughing and needing and wanting him. There was magic in her touch, and it wiped away the pain, the times those eyes had feared him, repulsed him, died for him.

They rolled on the bed, all arms and legs and hungry bodies rubbing against one another. She straddled him and sank onto him as they kissed, and her strength swallowed his. The memories coalesced into a single picture, her face over his, whispering kisses across his mouth and throat and cheek, her hair falling in a curtain around them, cutting off the sight of everything except her eyes. She was strength in his arms, heat wrapped around him, salt on his tongue and sweetness in his mind, and he sank into the darkness she offered, free of vision. Free of memory. Free of death.

Surrounded and overpowered by life.

Her climax took him over, and he responded in kind, pressing her close, arching into her, muffling his scream in her mouth. The whisper of memory raced through him again, drawing his skin up in a shiver, prickling the hair at the nape of his neck, tensing his muscles for the space of a heart beat before it was gone and he was completely in the present again.

A present which consisted, in its entirety, of one slender, wild-haired, keen-sighted Gypsy woman draped over him like a blanket, smelling of lemons and cinnamon, tasting of salt, feeling like life. His arms tightened around her, and she snuggled against him for a moment, before tensing. He pried his eyes open and looked at her, only to find her glaring over his shoulder at someone standing in the doorway. He arched his neck on the pillow and rolled his eyes like a skittish horse in order to see what was causing that inimical glare.

Montoya. Of course. Smiling at them. If a snake could smile, that's what it would look like. He groaned.

"I can see now what caused your delay in returning, Doctor Helm."

Belatedly, he grabbed the blanket and pulled it up over both of them. It was all he had the energy to do at the moment. "Did you need something, Colonel?" he snarled, spitting out a mouthful of Marta's curls. She was still glaring at Montoya, who seemed to find the whole situation quite amusing.

"Only to ensure that the fever has not spread. As I can see, it is not a fever I need fear, and so I will leave you to your course of treatment."

"Pendejo," Marta hissed at his departing back. It stiffened slightly, but didn't stop or turn around. When her gaze did drop back to Methos, he smiled at her.

"Was that a payment or a bribe?" She was good. He didn't even see her swing before her open palm connected with his cheekbone and nearly snapped his neck. Before he could blink the stars from his eyes, she kissed him on the bruise already forming beneath his eye.

"My body is a gift, and not one I give often."

"I am honored," he said with the grace of a courtier, eyes still watering slightly from being slapped so hard his ears were ringing.

"You should be," she growled at him quietly, then leaned down to kiss him again, this time on the mouth. His hand came up and tangled in her curls, and the kiss lasted for a very long time. Then she stood and dressed, making no fuss, leaning over to touch him on the shoulder, along the chest, on the tip of his nose, brushing the fringe from his forehead. Her touch didn't burn, didn't trigger an onslaught of memories this time.

It left warmth in its wake.

It was dangerous.

_She_ was dangerous.

She turned as she started to leave and stared down at him, propped up on one elbow, watching her go. "I don't know what you are. What you've done. But I know who you are now. A healer. One who creates, not destroys." She leaned down and brushed a feather-light kiss across his lips. "Thank you for my Tessa's life. Know that we shall keep your secret as you keep ours."

The last words were only a whisper, and they echoed in his head. A threat and a reassurance. As long as he kept her confidence about the identity behind the mask, so would she keep his about his own mask. It was a promise that he wouldn't have to leave again for some time. For she was good at keeping secrets.

Almost as good as he was.

He dropped back against the pillows and stared up at the ceiling, smiling softly at nothing in particular. He'd lived in the shadow of death for too long. For now, he was alive again, and painful as it would no doubt become, for this moment, it was worth it.

_finito_


End file.
